The recent $2 trillion infrastructure agreement is expected to include money for improving internet service in rural areas, but rural broadband expansion is tricky thanks to one government agency’s much-criticized broadband maps.

The FCC’s maps probably overstate how many places in the country have access to high-speed internet. That’s because a census block is considered covered if a provider says it could deliver service there “without an extraordinary commitment of resources.” The agency’s maps suggest broadband internet is available to about 92% of people in the U.S.

Microsoft
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researchers recently released a rival map that was based on the internet speeds of people using its software, such as its Office suite or its Bing search engine. It’s shown below with the FCC’s data, and it says 49% of people don’t use the internet at broadband speeds. The software giant is interested in the issue in part because it’s plugging a particular technology for rural broadband expansion.

Microsoft, FCC

This Microsoft graphic shows how the company’s usage data tells a different story than the FCC’s data.

“What you have is this giant disparity between what’s being experienced on the ground and what the current federal data indicates,” said Zach Cikanek, spokesman for Connect Americans Now, a group backed by Microsoft, various states’ farm bureaus and other organizations. “Unfortunately, at the short end of the stick are the rural communities who are being told by the federal government in Washington that they’re connected when they know for a fact they can’t get online.”

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on April 10, the committee’s chairman — Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker — said he welcomed the FCC’s ongoing efforts on broadband mapping, as he also stressed what’s at stake. “Flawed and inaccurate maps ultimately waste resources and stifle opportunities for economic development in our rural and underserved communities,” Wicker said.

About 150 enterprises have reported lobbying on rural broadband since 2006, according to data on their disclosures from OpenSecrets.org, a website tracking money in politics that’s run by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Among those that have lobbied the most on this issue are cable companies such as Comcast
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and their trade association, which is called NCTA - The Internet & Television Association.

The NCTA criticized Microsoft’s recent map in an April 10 letter to the FCC, saying the software company is drawing “a number of unsupportable conclusions” because it “conflates availability and usage.” In its letter, the trade group also offered details on its proposal for fixing the FCC’s mapping problem, saying the agency should move from using census blocks to letting companies submit their network maps or “whatever source data makes the most sense for them.”

The industry association’s proposal comes as critics accuse cable companies and other internet service providers of contributing to the problem, because the data they give to the agency paints an inaccurately rosy picture of broadband availability, with the companies incentivized to downplay industry failures.

Sizable amounts of taxpayer money have been set aside to boost connectivity in rural areas, separate from anything that might come from the potential $2 trillion infrastructure overhaul. For example, a $4.5 billion federal grant program is aiming to expand mobile broadband service in rural areas, though it’s on hold as the FCC investigates whether wireless carriers submitted inaccurate maps of their coverage.

The recent infrastructure deal could improve the FCC’s maps and rural connectivity, but it sounds like Cikanek from Connect Americans Now, the Microsoft-backed group, isn’t holding his breath.

“If there’s a big commitment to rural broadband in a major infrastructure package, it’s entirely possible that we’ll see more time and energy put into refining these broadband maps. That said, this is one very early step in the right direction toward a bipartisan agreement,” he said.

“We’re not at that point yet where lawmakers are putting pen to paper, so it’s hard to say what exactly it could offer for rural connectivity.”

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